Neuroscience is the new black! You see it everywhere – Neuro-Selling, Neuro-Marketing, and of course Neuro-Leadership – the neuro- most relevant to this blog and this little duckie!
So what is Neuro-Leadership? It is….
“A field of study that explores the processes within the brain that underlie or influence human decisions, behaviours and interactions in the workplace and beyond!
(Dr Al H Ringlab and David Rock, 2008)
From my perspective, Neuro-Leadership helps us to assess whether what we are doing as a leader, as a parent or as a colleague is useful, or counter-useful, and can provide us with clues and strategies on how to:
- make useful decisions
- have more useful conversations
- support and guide others in a useful way.
And that both challenges and excites me because, in my experience, there is a lot of stuff that goes on in our personal and professional worlds that is NOT useful!
How does that play out for you?
What, in your world, is time spent that is not useful?
For example, when you yell at the kids, you trigger a strong threat response in their limbic system (and you for that matter), and they literally cannot take note of anything you are saying or expecting. It is virtually impossible for them to respond in a logical and controlled way. Yelling is not useful – it just makes us feel better and like we are in control – but we aren’t, are we!
And in the workplace, making the assumption that when a colleague or direct report walks into your office and asks for help that he actually wants you to tell him the answer, is not useful, because mostly, that’s not at all what they want, and even if they do, it’s not useful to give them advice without asking lots of qualifying questions first. Providing advice makes US feel useful, but it’s not always useful for the other person involved.
And finally, when an obviously upset person walks into a meeting, and we avoid paying attention to their emotional state (pretty much our natural MO) – that is not useful. We know that the brain responds positively to acknowledgement and the ‘labelling’ of an emotion, calming down the limbic system enabling the person to let go of the and move on.
If it’s not ‘useful’, then it’s wasted energy, and we don’t have that much energy to waste.
And on some level, we know all of this intuitively, but we don’t do it – because it’s not the norm, and we need to re-train our brains and habits and gain the confidence to act in this different way – automatically.
The first step to being a ‘neuru-guru’ is to understand how the brain really works, how to optimise how you use your brain, and how to gain control over it.
On June 16 we begin our 10 week brainFIT Boot Camp. If you have ever thought…
‘I must learn more about this stuff and how to use it’
then now is the time!
It’s a boot camp because it provides not just great information, an opportunity to train your brain, and an optional opportunity to learn how to solve a Rubik’s Cube (yes, really!) – you get a personal trainer (me) and a group to encourage you to keep focused and learn more deeply.
AND… you can do it from the comfort of your home or office!
I encourage you to at least have a look at what is involved, and I’d love to have you on the journey!
[button link=”http://unloched.com/?page_id=1559″ newwindow=”yes”] Virtual brainFIT Boot Camp[/button]
Have a great day!
Michelle